I mumble grave insults at the inanimate door as I crudely smash together a series of iron walls. Eventually I seal the final corner and find myself floating in the darkness, surrounded by the crude iron cube I built to detect if the teleportation was physical movement. The only light the small, dim green orb embedded into the door of the dungeon.

Barely illuminated by the indicator light, I lift up the rudimentary clock I made. It looks fairly ridiculous—a series of 30 large metal tubes holding small iron balls. At the start of each tube is a tiny force rune I calibrated to be just the right size so that the iron ball would reach the other side of the tube in approximately one second. On the other side of that tube is the button that directs the next ball to be pushed to the other side of the tube next to the first one. Since each ball takes one second to reach the other end, and each end makes the next ball take another second to reach its own end, it functions as a crude but functional 30 second timer.

Using the same molds I used to make the first timer, I’ve made a second timer, and my plan is to turn both clocks on at the same time and walk in and out of the dungeon. If there’s any large discrepancies in terms of time. I’ll know that most likely the door isn’t instantaneous travel, allowing me to be more specific in my experiments, slowly coming to a more concrete understanding of how this teleportation works.

After a quick nervous gulp, I turn on both timers and step through the portal.

Quickly turning around to leave so that there might be the smallest amounts of human error in my experiment, I stare blankly in despair as there is no door to be seen on this new wall.

—

Turning around, hearing the whistle of something in the air, I find a massive hunk of metal crashing towards my face.

I fall back; it’s too late; I am slammed into the wall I so recently stared at with despair; my helmet rings.

I scramble to get up. The soldier—no soldiers advance; they’re heavily armored in what looks to be some type of plate armor; one wields a long spear, the other quickly lunging towards me even as I think this, wields a strange sword with no tip.

Panicking as I see them approach with a burst of speed, I kick towards the closest one and release a deluge of stone with a flip of a switch embedded into my boot.

They are blasted backwards by the torrent of rock and slam into the strangely alien back wall; it doesn’t look like the room before. The room seems to be made up of blank grey stone now, not a mossy cave.

I am confused, addled, afraid. I press on the attack; the one with the spear—fuck it, I’ll just call them Spear—circles around me, waiting for the other to return; I can’t have that.

Quickly I flick on the heat beam and point it at them, but quick as the devil, Spear lunges to the side out of the way of the beam. They’re overextending; they won’t be able to get out of the way.

Pushing off the harsh stone floor, I leap across the room on a dime, with a crash I tackle Spear.

I crash into Spear’s chest; they are knocked onto the floor like a tin can hit with a baseball; they clatter to the floor. I soar over their prone form. Tumbling through the air, I bewildered wonder why such a heavily armored person is so ridiculously light before I abruptly smash onto the floor.

I grit my teeth as my armor digs into my laid-out body. I gasp, no air left in my lungs.

I desperately try to breathe to no avail; I lay on the floor, unable to do anything, as Spear gets up off the floor, and Sword quickly advances towards me.

Spear reaches me first; they take the but of their spear and lay it into the layered plates of my midsection; something crumbles, and as Spear pulls out the but, I can feel the ruptured metal dig into my skin.

I finally manage to bet a breath of air, but as I do, Sword reaches me and slams his strange pointless sword into my back three times, each time it glances off the plate, well protected against wild slashes like those.

Remembering that strange excessive lightness, I use my position on the floor to spin and sweep the two soldiers legs.

With a strangely empty series of clangs, they quickly fall to the floor, not more heavy than a large dog, and thus easily unbalanced.

With a quick push, I get back onto my feet as the two soldiers try to do the same. My breath still faint and painful, I nonetheless scream as I take my foot and stomp onto Sword’s head.

It feels strange; there is no iron cloaking my feet, only my extremely tough, subtly scaly skin, so I can feel it when the helmet crumples and I feel something wet spurt against my skin as something splits and tears.

They screech, the sound more like a movie monster than someone in pain, but they push off of me and scramble up, still somehow moving after I caved its armor in.

Reaching out with my hand, I flick the switch on the ice beam, and with a quick sweep, I block off Sword behind a wall of mystic ice. Quickly turning off the beam so I won’t be surrounded by ice, I turn on Spear.

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Spear is getting up as well; quickly I leap backward and retreat, getting out of melee range. The heat beam was turned off in my tumble, but I quickly flip it back on, and the beam leaps out of the gauntlet towards the prone form of Spear.

Somehow detecting the invisible beam of heat, Spear tries to scramble out the way, but with their position on the floor, they can’t get far, and it hits their armored legs.

The beam instantly fries it; I hear something sizzle as they stop trying to get up and start spasming with pain, waving their spear everywhere as I maintain the beam on their writhing body, before they eventually lay still on the floor dead.

I stare at the dead body blankly. I intellectually understand I'm supposed to feel something, anything. But I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t summon anything other than apathy at the sight of the corpse.

But while I stare at the corpse blankly, its partner reacts with much more fervor, a deluge of ink-black liquid erupts from the hole I tore into its helm. The inky black liquid dripping from the holes as if they were tears.

The tears drip down its arm, intermingling with its blade. With a screech it slams its strange blade upon the mystic ice. Already damaged by Sword’s earlier attempts to break out, the blade cleaves through the crude wall in one smooth motion.

It’s blade still extended. Sword nimbly leaps over the much reduced wall and runs at me with great speed.

I note down that they might be immensely vulnerable to heat considering what happened with Spear, but all strategy leaves, as its blade swings down, the executioner's blade onto the guilty.

Desperate I raise my hands in front of my face so that I won’t have my head cleaved into two. But Sword takes its sword, and with a lunge, it knocks aside my guarding hands. With another elegant sweep, it crashes its blade into a chink of my armor, and I scream as I feel it dig into the bones of my wrist.

I hastily turn around and try to scramble away, all thought except for survival disappearing, but as I do, I hear a scrape and I feel my ankle blaze with pain as something important is cut, and I crumple to the floor.

Swiftly, I turn back to my opponent, only to see the dull point of its sword rocket towards my helmet. Clumsily, I slap aside the blade with my gauntleted hands only to screech when I feel something shift in the hand that had a blade dig into its wrist.

Sword ducks as the still-on heat beam nears its form with my clumsy block, but it doesn’t stay away for long. As Sword quickly slaps my already injured hand to the side, my hand brushes against the activation rune for that hand, and the beam shuts off.

Smoothly, Sword transitions from knocking aside my hands into a different stance before it slams a heavily armored foot into the side that was crumpled in by the dead Spear.

I gasp in pain as the hard boot digs into my ribs, but I am not held back for long, the extraordinarily light form of my opponent not allowing for an immense amount of force in its kicks.

One of my legs still strangely floppy. I take the still-effective one and kick towards its legs, flipping on the switch at the same time.

But unlike last time, they are ready. With a flurry of sword swings, Sword reduces the deluge of stone into nothing but dust. However, unable to ignore momentum and Newton's Third Law as easily as they ignore any and all convention for swordcraft, they are pushed backwards, their boots grating against the stone floor.

On the floor, unable to move due to a faulty leg, I filled with panic. Reach for my shoulders hoping to pull off the Shiver technique so that I could freeze them in pla-

I scream as they leap towards me, my efforts to freeze them foiled. They fall onto me with little grace but much noise, their strangely light form quickly covering me.

A shock of purpose running through me I get the hand with the mangled wrist into their way, and desperately try to turn on the heat beam with my mangled ha-

They let go of their sword, grab my hand by the wrist, and twist. I scream as I feel my broken wrist roil in their grip.

I feel something slip out of the armor, and as I look at the helmet, inky black tears dripping onto my armor I see tendrils of flesh jump out of the armor and slice against my own thick armor. More and more meat tendrils hook into the back of my armor holding us together as another tendril retrieves its sword. Unable to scramble away any longer, I am pinned down as It takes its strange sword and stabs it toward the chinks of plate in my midsection.

With desperate energy, I using my last effective hand, grab the blunt of the tipless sword and push against its vicious stab.

A struggle ensues; at first I managed to push its swords nearly off course, but soon enough I get tired as it pushes the sword closer and closer to my vulnerable belly. I try to turn on the rune for the ice beam but I can’t do it while also keeping the blade away. And my other hand is being crushed.

Death inches away, a sudden calm overtakes me as I try to figure out someway, anyway to make it out alive.

Considering the circumstances, the enemy that Sword most closely matches is the Golems. Since it seems to be some creature of minimal biology and largely a creature of just armor. Thus, its armor is the main point to the conflict. Since that is the case, the earlier solution to the golems should be quite effective. I just need my tools, whatever the cost.

I grit my teeth and push the blade away from the meat of my belly. With this, I roll in its fleshy grip, twisting my mangled gauntlet out of Sword’s hand.

The blade digs into me, taking a gouge of meat with it as it slices a deep gash into my side.

My hands now free. I flick on first the ice, and then the heat. Held here by its fleshy tendrils, its own weapons turned against it, Sword cannot get away in time.

Both beams hit, and I hear a strange burst as if steam erupted inside a sealed tanker.

I see Sword's armor rupture and explode, revealing nothing inside—no man. Nothing except strange fleshy tendrils somehow embedded into the armor.

Bits of meat and metal fly into the air as the ravaged remains hiss and scream with cooking meat and spilled inky tears.

Exhausted, bleeding, and broken I fade out of consciousness.

—

Barely a second later, I blink back awake. Laid out on the floor, with more parts broken than whole.

My heat beam still on, I slowly point it towards myself. I huff and puff in the armor as the horrendous heat is absorbed and turns on my healing enchantments. Slowly my various slices, bruises, and broken bones lessen in pain as the enchantment puts me back into one piece.

After a long, long while, I feel that my Achilles tendon is finally in proper order and that my hand no longer screams with every movement, so I slowly get onto my knees and then achingly stand up.

“Fuck that is much slower than I thought it would be,” I say as deep pain shoots through my lungs with every word and broken metal scrapes against my durable skin.

I gingerly touch my side with the three separate wounds, and gratefully enough, I see that the blood has stopped flowing.

It seems to be good enough for now.

Shuffling on the floor tired, I approach the bodies of my two opponents, curious as to why they were so undeniably strange.

Coming across the ruptured and blown apart body of Sword. First I see that, strangely enough this plate armor isn’t a series of solid plates but two plates pressed together with strips of strange flesh pulsing inbetween.

Hmm, how interesting that accounts for why they’re so light; they couldn’t have been much heavier than a normal set of plate armor and a weapon. Additionally, it explains why my usual heat-based attacks were so incredibly effective; any high temperature would essentially lead to the creature being stuck between two frying pans it couldn’t escape.

I wonder what circumstances caused this sort of creature to arise, perhaps they're somewhat similar to hermit crabs, who make up for a lack of shell by sheltering in any item they can find. This armor seems to have been custom made for the creature due to the two plates it lived between, so perhaps these specific creatures are some sort of trained guard animal.

Although where in the hell was its brain, there should be a fairly large one in here; it shed something for its fallen companion; it knew how to swing a sword; I have no idea if it was sapient but it was certainly at least sentient.

Oh fuck, what am I supposed to do now? I’ve just killed something, and I don’t even know what it was. Hell, I didn’t even try to talk to it; all I know is it was trying to kill me, and I don’t know why.

How did I even wind up in here? Did the portal mess up or something and drop me into the middle of the dungeon.

I breathe in, I breathe out, I remind myself that it was trying to kill me, then knowing that there’s not much else to do, I get up and move on.

I'll spend some time here in the first room to recuperate and examine this dungeon for a way out. I don’t have the knowledge necessary to do something more creative than hope a portal pops up. And while it might be my paranoia talking, I can’t rely on something so flimsy as hope.